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98 Carmine Zoccali
Only one of the ratios used by the Italian watchdog committee has the
same significance as one identified by Business administration. This is the ratio E/
TA, which gives the same information as the ratio Total debts/Total assets. It is
possible that a wise combination of the degree of indebtedness with other indexes
could increase the ability of these organisms to predict firms’ bankruptcies and to
promote the regularity of sports competitions. For example, by connecting its
interpretation with other indicators, identified by Business administration literature
and commonly used to evaluate firms’ solvency, like Current ratio, Quick ratio, No
credit interval and Working capital to Total assets, which function as sensors of
financial stress.
Considering that the Italian licensing system measures the likelihood of
failure of Serie A clubs using only the VP/DF indicator, of Serie B clubs by looking
at the VP/DF and E/TA ratios and of Lega-Pro clubs by testing the R/I and E/TA
ratios, a practical implication of this job is that the univariate model currently used
by the Italian watchdog committee has no ability or a very low capacity to predict
the failure of football clubs.
One limitation of this research is common to all investigations based on
univariate models, and in particular based on financial ratios coming from
conventional accrual accounting. Another limitation may be related to the different
values of total assets reported in the financial statements of firms involved in the
sample. Football teams are of different size even if they play in the same league.
This is because each football company has its specific profile in terms of number
of fans, of kind of shareholders and of way of playing, and this reduces the
comparability between the football clubs.
Future research may test whether the ratios recently identified by Business
administration literature are more able to split healthy companies from vulnerable
ones or whether the football industry requires the definition of specific ratios,
different from the ones used in others sectors.
Other research could also combine signals coming from different cycles
of management, attempting to use a multivariate analysis in order to define a
single function able to summarize the state of an enterprise, to overcome the
potentially conflicting indications that result from using single indicators, such as
the best known and most-widely used multiple discriminant analysis method proposed
by Edward I. Altman. By using this technique the different perspectives used for
analyzing the company’s financial situation are simultaneously considered instead
of being evaluated sequentially.
In addition, other research based on financial statements could analyze
the relationship between financial performances and corporate model, such as
financial results and business model. And finally, another area of research that
could benefit from further studies is the way of fixing the fair value of players
through the transfer system. This is because, each model needs to be free from
the negative effects of creative accounting in order to correctly predict the failure
of firms.